


Frail Edges

by regala_electra



Category: Farscape
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-09
Updated: 2003-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regala_electra/pseuds/regala_electra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It'll all be fine as long as everything's stripped away and he doesn't have to feel anymore. Snippets from moments; truth dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frail Edges

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: everything up to Season Four "I Shrink, Therefore, I Am"

He's standing by himself, staring at nothing really. But he's been there for a long time, not moving.

And Aeryn needs this. No more silence. She needs him. But she can't tell him.

Everything will fall apart.

And that happened to her once and she can't survive on memories of ghosts.

So she touches his shoulder and says his name, softly, carefully. She doesn't remember how to talk to him. How to stop lying. But she still talks to him. "John?"

He winces and she wants to stop him from doing that, stop that look on his face, but she can't; he's always been like that.

He's changed so much.

On the wall are marks, marks hastily wiped away. Wormholes.

Equations.

The one thing that does matters to him.

"I don't want Scorpius to see..."

He doesn't trust him. She asked him to.

He doesn't trust her either.

Biting her lip, she nods, faking her understanding.

He looks at her distantly as though he doesn't remember.

As though he doesn't feel.

Not John. Not Crichton.

Not hers.

She hasn't told him the truth and she won't.

Attempting a smile (because it looked warm and maybe the John she knew would somehow return if she meant it, even though she didn't), she leaves him alone.

Alone with his wormholes.

*

The dance.

The taste of beer on her lips. Rain falling down, masking the air with its dewy scent. The final goodbye. Beyond hope. Aeryn.

 _"We don't say goodbye."_

Aeryn.

The kiss was sweet.

But that was before...

The laka feels like a sharp bite in his head, as though everything suddenly is yanked away, ripped apart.

As though the doors are opened and he can see inside, although he does not want to; he doesn't look away.

He hasn't talked to her since the morning and he feels...clearer. Lighter.

Freer.

He'd laugh, but they aren't any jokes he finds funny anymore.

Taps his gun, resting on the chessboard, pointing to the opposition. Yes. He knows what he had to do.

Frail edges of dreams and hopes gone, he's able to concentrate, to follow the bunny trail.

And find his wormholes waiting for him.

Chiana walks into his room, eyes nervously looking, looking as though they're memorizing everything so when she sees time freeze that one time too many, she'll remember.

She'll still see even if she doesn't anymore.

"We're getting closer."

"I know." It's like a siren's song. He just hopes he won't find himself shattered on the rocks. "I told you...I can sense it..."

"Yeah, I know. I just-just wanted to tell you. To make sure. That you knew."

"I'm fine, Pip," he answers with a smile that doesn't look anything like one of his own.

He's been practicing it in the mirror.

It's hard to feel when he strips away the lingering pain.

And he's happy for that.

*

He watches with a resigned, detached disinterest as she sits quietly in the corridor, head bent, lost in some distant place.

Aeryn Sun, former Peacekeeper, looking so weak and lost. From all his dealings with her, he thinks she's acting quite unusual...but he won't comment yet until he has the facts.

"Aeryn."

"Scorpius." Looking away, "I'm surprised that John let you walk around..."

Twist of his lips as amusement briefly colors his voice, "Considering that he knows that no cell on this ship can hold me, he's become...accustomed to the fact that I do have free reign."

Nodding his head back to the garishly painted DRD following him, "And he also has something tracking me. A DRD that follows John's orders first and foremost."

She isn't listening, but Scorpius is not surprised. Aeryn has seemed so detached lately, as though something else was occupying her mind and it's too difficult for her to actually say it, so she keeps the heavy burden huddled inside of her. Looking at her tense figure, she seems worn out without actually giving away whatever's causing her pain.

And that makes him curious. Enough to kept a closer watch on her.

Scorpius has been careful to make sure she doesn't suspect, doesn't realize...

She too is valuable.

She's also lying about something.

And that knowledge would be beneficial to John Crichton. And if he got it, well then, he'll have another link to John.

At all costs.

He wants John to trust him. And she is the link.

She gets up, turning a rather strange quirk of the lips to an almost smile, more artificial than she intended, "I have to go. I need to speak with John..."

Trailing off, she quietly takes off, down the corridor.

In the opposite direction of John's quarters.

*

Doors open once more and he watches Aeryn die in his arms, an old, graying woman and a locket clutched in his hand that he isn't supposed to remember.

Beer-tinged lips and cold hair against dead skin.

He feels himself in Aeryn's arms, so warm and soft, warm against his growing coldness. Dying, and for a brief, fleeting moment, he is freed of his duties and he can go to sleep.

Rounded belly and feeling the kick of his child, Aeryn dancing in that dress and she looks like she's going to get married, champagne toast and this is where the dream always ends...

With Aeryn smiling.

Promising.

And a quick succession of snippets he doesn't remember there before.

Of the past.

Chiana, eyes wild, locked up, asking for him to help her.

For mercy.

D'Argo's hands against John's own face because he really, really wants the pain to go away and D'Argo looks sympathetic enough to give him his wish. To kill him.

For friendship.

A kiss from Zhaan, that only belonged to a silly game, the hands on his head, unity, so extraordinarily that he can't ever remember it, no matter how many times he wakes from the dream, ghost-touch of her hands against his face.

For faith in others.

Them, all of them, sitting together, eating, drinking, laughing, because this is a good moment and they have no idea what comes next.

For Peace.

For Hope.

It hurts more than anything else.

He takes out the laka and it stops. It goes away and everything unravels and he can relax again. He's okay now.

He's free.

Wormholes.

He has to find them.

*

There was a sketching that he had made for her in his book that she loved to look at when she was (briefly) alone on Talyn. Dull stains that meant nothing apart, everything to him when combined. Deep, dark markings and blots.

John wasn't (isn't, she reminds herself) an artist, but his rendering of home, of Earth, was extraordinary in the small dots of places he promised to take.

The "English" words she could read, but still mean nothing to her, except the memories of what John had told her about them. She doesn't look at the sketching anymore. She keeps his journal, hoping that somewhere in there, it makes sense. He had written often of Earth.

That could never be her home though and she couldn't ever let him ( _this_ John) know this.

When he goes home, goes back to Earth, she won't go with him, can't stay with him.

But he isn't going.

Touches her stomach and there, right there, could be his child...or possibly not.

Could be nothing.

She didn't want to tell, didn't want him to realize that she's lying to him. Lying to him, everyday she keeps silent is worse than before; she has no other idea of how to act. But she had and did and it's a mess.

It isn't supposed to be this way.

She had a plan.

Frell plans. They never work out.

No matter how much time is put into them.

*

Pilot isn't happy to see John, but he doesn't reveal that when John appears in his den.

Yet John knows. The extract works its wonders and John understands, he knows.

He just doesn't care.

As long as it doesn't threaten them immediately, he's fine with the lies. He can store it for now.

Forget it for the moment.

"How're ya doing, Pilot?"

"Well, Commander. Moya is feeling better, although she is nervous about entry into the Tormented Space. She is also concerned about the..."

"Wormholes," he replies without an ounce of meaning, either way.

"Yes. Since..."

And Pilot doesn't finish that because he doesn't  
remember.

Or at least, that's how he wants John to see it.

But he knows already.

He doesn't want to, but it's all so clear. Pilot's mind is linked to Moya's and she remembers, she feels. The marks are still imbedded, scarred, and will not go away.

But if Pilot concentrates enough, he can pretend too.

Pretend and make the edges go away. Yet John can only see the edges, he sees the things that Pilot doesn't want to say.

Pilot's hiding something as well.

But John has other things on his mind.

Other concerns.

For the moment, he is wary, but doesn't let on. Too dangerous, too unknown.

He can't control it, so he doesn't touch it.

"Is there something else you wanted, Commander?"

Warily, he replies, "Just want to see how the new guest is doing, if he's stealing towels and those little soaps at Hotel Moya."

"Scorpius," Pilot says, used to his strange vernacular over the past few cycles, "is currently in the maintenance bay. Sikozu is there as well..."

"Got it." Almost out of the room, John turns, a blank hidden expression on his face. "Thanks, Pilot."

"It is my job..."

Blink...and he can hear the screaming as Moya is ripped into the wormhole...shaking it off, he repeats without sincerity in a dull voice, "Thanks."

*

The first shot into his body burns and he can pretend that it's going to kill him.

Aeryn is clutching him in her arms, screaming at him not to die, not to leave her again. It's the same for her, a repeat she says she wants, but she doesn't.

She is dressed just like when he first saw her back on Moya. All black, all darkness.

All lies.

 _"Don't worry about me. I've never felt better."_

His child is dead in her womb, a dead man's baby. His.

John Crichton's.

Death.

She takes the herbs knowing what will happen...takes them to forget; to set herself on her chosen path...all is clear.

All is broken.

Pulse pistol against her temple.

The image isn't real.

Chiana, blind, screaming as she watches the burning, slow and long, body twisted, broken.

D'Argo covered in dark, dark blood and it can't run clear, it's finally stopping; he's not at peace.

Head on a stick and Rygel's a part of the collection; conversation piece for years to come, the eyes staring out in betrayed silence.

Calm, unhurried rap-tap-tap of boots as Grayza runs her finger against his lips, her prize...her captive...her revenge...

The taste can make it better. Just for a second, even though inside he is screaming.

Inside he is dying.

Makes the dream stop circling around his vision. Makes the world stop spinning.

Round and round, Aeryn's lips against his, they're going to die, so why not have this moment if their air supply is running out?

Sitting against her, god she smells so good...just one little kiss...one little taste...

 _"I love you."_

Tasting her again, but it isn't death he tastes.

It's the beginning.

It was sweet...once.

What he doesn't want to remember, what he doesn't want to feel, comes back too quickly, it's supposed to last longer, and he can't let himself remember feeling like that anymore. He feels alive.

The laka is snorted a little too harshly and he gasps out loud, feeling it burn inside...making the past, the present, the future stop reminding him, stop hurting him.

Just stop.

*

They have arrived.

Now, they have acquired a brief reprieve, from the Peacekeepers, from the Scarrans, but Aeryn knows that isn't so. Her eyes betray her when her words do not. Scorpius examines the deep space with distain, but answers that he is there for John's wormholes and that he has no choice.

John would tell Scorpius he isn't going to fucking hand over the blueprints and that Scorpy may as well go screw around with Sikozu and fuck out the information that way...

But he doesn't.

He doesn't talk to Chiana, or D'Argo, or hell, even Rygel, because if they know, then they'll understand, then they'll want to help. And then, they'll die.

And he doesn't want to see that.

He's seen too much already.

Instead, he takes Aeryn aside and just as he yearns to take the extract one more time, to stop seeing the lives he didn't lead, the deaths he won't have, the love he cannot feel, he tells her, "I forgive you. I'm sorry. Aeryn, I'm sorry."

And her smile is frightening and beautiful at that same time. When he kisses her, it is like death and wormholes, and weapons and nothing.

It just is.

After that, when he leaves to go over the equations he has recently written, the extract kills whatever lingering taste of warmth resides in his mouth.

And he's better.

For now, the lie is necessary.


End file.
